Thursday, February 17, 2005

These days I’m less a person and more a nebulous gas of such loosely connected entities as sleeplessness, lust, superheroes, academic writing, caffeine, and music. Don’t get me wrong it’s great. It’s my natural state. It reminds me of when I did my masters, back in 1999. Due to the insane Dublin housing boom and rent increases, I shared a room with one of my best friends (bizarrely after such an experience he still is). I wrote almost my entire MA thesis on David Cronenberg inside a walk-in wardrobe during sleepless nights before my 9-5 shifts as a general office monkey in a crooked law-adjusting firm. My inspirational thinking to get the job done was to imagine the wardrobe was a capsule aloft in space and I could only return to earth if I finished a certain amount of words, a la the capsule-bound astronaut/DJ of Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney. The soundtrack to such exploits was invariably Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and the ever-present Pixies / Frank Black / Breeders back catalogue.

My sister’s boyfriend gave me a CD burner recently as a belated Christmas/birthday present, and I have been enjoying the quintessential modern pleasure of promiscuous cd burning and related copyright theft. True to form my first ever iTunes download was The Pixies' “Bam Thwok”. It fills me with joy to hear these fortysomethings still sounding shit-cool among the current gaggle of tousle-haired mooks. It's funny how trends in band names go, back in the early nineties it was all single-syllables: Pulp, Blur, Cud, Verve, Curve. Now it's 'The Somethings': The Kills, The Killers, The Stills, The Hives, The Libertines etc etc. It has all the originality of Robert Ludlum book title which always has to be called 'The Something Something'.

Mood music’s all well and good, but what if your mood is frustration and lustful sleeplessness? What then! Well thankfully there are some amazing labels that I’m getting into that produce music that sounds like Nymphomaniac robots at it in a big dustbin: Warp records (which already had my undying respect for releasing Christopher Morris’s Blue Jam) have Squarepusher, which sounds like drunken computers arguing. On a quirkier note, there’s the excellent Oakland label Tigerbeat6 (Anything from ‘Philip K. Dick country’ has to be good!). Their compilation, "Open Up and Say..." features Cex’s track 'Stillnaut Rjyan' with the lovely lines,

My spaceship’s ON FIRE!There’s a snake in my SPACE SUIT!Mission control have all gone homeThey say they can replace you!

Which inadvertently led to my reminiscences of that Dublin walk-in wardrobe. I told a new friend this recently, she commented, “you really are obsessed with science fiction aren’t you?” I think that’s a fair assessment, (or understatement)...I think a ‘drip-drip’ approach about revealing my other “interests” is advisable, don’t you? I'm back in the capsule tonight and will not leave until the damn Batman chapter is finished.

A 'general penchant'?????? Your propensities, in my experience, have been most specific, little Lorcom. I could mention the ch***s w**h d***s, the Kid Sparkle freakfest you loaned me - I am still scrubbing my retinas at the memory - and other sundry but highly specific foibles. A 'general penchant' indeed, fuck off Morrissey... Just get the Batman chapter finished and we can all go home.

Indeed badbrute, where be kid sparkle now? into the same porn black hole that befell Rocco in Rome. Poor kid sparkle. Don't worry, the bat-torment will be over soon and the paradise island of the Wonder Woman chapter awaits. By Hera.

Reviews!

“McGrane’s set goes into the kind of detail about cult comics and movies that would have even Jonathan Ross’s head spinning.” - Andrew Johnson, AU Magazine

"Straight faced comedy with a good sense of comic timing"*** Three Weeks

"Free comedy is a mixed bag, and free student comedy is an even bigger risk - but in this case it's one worth taking. East Anglian comics Tom Moran, Jonathan Brittain, Johnny Kearns and Lorcan McGrane filled an enjoyable if variable hour at the Standing Order. "***Three Weeks

Reviews

Internet blogs are depressing and sad. There is only one person whose blogging I will accept and tolerate, and that is my friend and co-worker Lorcan McGrane, because he is Irish and studies superheroes, so he's allowed to be a bit quirky. Also, I think he may have a gun.-Tom Moran, Standup Comedian.